A woman alone. After dark. In downtown Norfolk. A recipe for fear? Not last Tuesday. Safest place in town, I thought as I pulled into the dimly lit parking garage behind City Hall.

LATE MONDAY afternoon, I did something I almost never do: turned off the TV. Ciao, CNN. Mañana, MSNBC. Farewell, Fox. Cable news is my constant companion. It flickers soundlessly on a tiny set near my computer. I glance at it throughout the day, lest I miss some global catastrophe while immersed in a city council column. I watch it while I make dinner. And later, at the gym.

Admit it. When you read about that Portsmouth mom who was caught for secretly enrolling her kid in a Chesapeake high school, you gave the lady a mental high five. OK, maybe not. I did. Calm down. I'm not condoning illegal activity. What she did was wrong. If you want your kids in Chesapeake schools, there's a simple solution: Move to Chesapeake.

It's been almost 80 years since the Doughertys were tossed out of their house on Mary Street. It was the only place Randall and his wife, Grace, would ever own. A row house on a shabby street in a small New Jersey town.

No, that's not a new tattoo on my arm. It's a bruise. Why, yes, it is rather large. Colorful, too. And if you touch the middle of the purple part - lightly - you can feel a knot the size of a golf ball. Shaped like South America, you say? Maybe. But in just the right light I swear it looks like Richard Nixon.

Beware jailhouse interviews. Remember Roger Keith Coleman? For more than a decade, this charming inmate seduced anyone who would listen with his crocodile tears, proclamations of innocence and righteous indignation over the miscarriage of justice that landed him on Death Row. By the time he was executed in 1992, Coleman had cultivated a global fan club.

You go out of town for a couple of weeks and what do you find in the mountain of junk mail on your desk? An ominous letter. From your dairy. Dear Dedicated Customer, it began. Uh-oh, I thought. Here comes a price hike.

Jailhouse interviews make great news copy. If you're a fan of fiction, that is. The guys behind the glass, with rap sheets as colorful as their jumpsuits, share at least one trait: They're accomplished liars. And lying is usually the least of their transgressions. That said, what do we make of a jailhouse interview conducted by Pilot reporter John Hopkins with Renaldo Turnbull Jr.?

A New Jersey girl had to be abducted, raped and murdered by a paroled pervert before state legislatures around the nation would enact "Megan's Laws" forcing convicted sex offenders to register with authorities once they're released from prison.

Just when you thought air travel couldn't get any worse, two drunks board your flight and one of them barfs all over business class. Ah, the guilty pleasure of being sandwiched in coach, watching the excitement from the cheap seats. On top of that, the flight is then delayed while the tipsy travelers are ejected from the aircraft and the front of the cabin is fumigated.